‘10 Cloverfield Lane’ Is the Title of J.J. Abrams’ Secret Bad Robot Movie

In 2014, news broke that filmmaker Dan Trachtenberg—who helmed the short filmPortal: No Escape—would be directing a post-apocalyptic thriller called Valencia (also referred to as The Cellar) for Bad Robot and Paramount Insurge, produced by J.J. Abrams. While it’s true that the film is a post-apocalyptic thriller and was produced by Abrams, it appears that the Star Wars: The Force Awakens director has pulled another fast one on us—the movie’s actual title is 10 Cloverfield Lane.

Yes indeed, it appears as though that long-talked-about sequel to the secretive Abrams-produced 2008 film Cloverfield is not only happening, it’s already in the can. Abrams is taking the exact same marketing approach to this film as he did with Cloverfield, as a Collider reader who caught an east coast screening of Paramount’s 13 Hours hipped us to the news that the teaser trailer for 10 Cloverfield Lane is attached to Michael Bay’s Benghazi film. Surprise!

We subsequently reached out to Paramount Pictures for comment, who provided Collider with this exclusive statement from J.J. Abrams himself:

“The idea came up a long time ago during production. We wanted to make it a blood relative of Cloverfield. The idea was developed over time. We wanted to hold back the title for as long as possible.”

Image via Paramount

The film stars John Goodman, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and John Gallagher, Jr. and when we previously spoke with Winstead while she was promoting her indie Faults, she told us the story revolves around a woman who wakes up in a cellar where she’s being kept by a stranger, played by Goodman. The actress elaborated a bit on the plot by saying the following:

“He tells me that basically the world is over outside because there’s been a nuclear fall-out. It does have similarity to Faults, in some ways, because you don’t know who’s telling the truth or who to believe. There’s a lot of, who’s manipulating who, and all of that. Tonally, it’s very different, but it has some of those same themes.”

Now that we know the title of the film, this “post-apocalyptic” setting appears to make much more sense, but how exactly it ties to Cloverfield remains unknown. Abrams tells us it’s a “blood relative”, which seems to suggest that the movie isn’t a direct sequel to Cloverfield but instead takes place within the same universe. Our reader says the trailer is not found footage so it’s taking a different visual style than the Matt Reeves-directed original, but is it set within the New York City area? And how long after the events of Cloverfield does it pick up? That’s all unclear, but seeing as how the first trailer is set to arrive imminently, I’m sure we’ll have plenty more questions once that’s officially released.

Luckily, we don’t have to wait long at all to see the film. 10 Cloverfield Lane is set to hit theaters on March 11th.

What do you think, folks? 8 years later, are you still eager for another Cloverfield story? Sound off in the comments below.

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